[PD] left mouse click abuse

[marius schebella]

Frank Barknecht wrote:
> Hallo,
> Chris McCormick hat gesagt: // Chris McCormick wrote:
> 
>> I'm really digging the direction this is going. If I could just chip my
>> 2c into the fray: I have to agree with Frank that being able to select a
>> tower of object boxes and then click a key combination to connect them
>> by patch cords would be useful, as would a keystroke to auto-space
>> things horizontally or vertically. I also agree with Tim that Blender's
>> same-key select/deselect toggle feels very natural. I would vote for
>> ctrl-A both selecting all and deselecting all.
> 
> Here's Chun and Matju's pd~conv paper: "Keyboard-only Interface For Pure
> Data" http://artengine.ca/~catalogue-pd/18-Lee-Bouchard.pdf
> 
> In general I think, Pd should not try to outsmart the user. Finding the
> most "stupid" solutions to problems has been a good guideline in the
> past IMO.
> 
> Autoplacement and autoconnections maybe should be more stupid in this
> regard: Instead of trying to make them figure out on their own when they
> should be applied, they could be explict operations that a user has to
> start actively. This transfers the obligation to be smart from the program to
> the user, who in general is smarter than software anyway. Personally I
> don't like software that tries to be smarter than me, that's why I don't
> run OS-X or Windows. ;)
> 
> So instead of doing auto-placements and connections as default,
> user-initiated operations should be preferred, i.e. a better "Tidy up"
> and a "Connect all selected objects" as proposed.

but wouldn't it be nice to have shortcuts for all the combinations that 
you have to type 10 times a day?
for example I create [metro] and then a auto-completion shortcut will 
add a connected toggle? or cycle through a set of recently used 
combinations with that object?
[openpanel] always goes with a bang input. default pd-auto-completion 
could directly be taken from the help patch for the object or a list of 
standard combinations for this object.
marius.

> 
> Additionally placing objects is such a natural operation for mouse
> actions and that overriding the mouse actions with an automatism should
> be approached very carefully.
> 
> That's just my opinion of course and open to debate.
> 
> Ciao